


the city joins us with hands of grace

by paperiuni



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Courtship, Established Relationship, Fluff, Good Days, M/M, Porn with Feelings, Soppily Romantic Rope Bondage, Val Royeaux as a Special Guest Star
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-23 13:38:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4878910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian plays the gentleman, Bull is quite taken with this, and, as it goes, someone ends up tied to a bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the city joins us with hands of grace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Barkour](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/gifts).



> This fic was written: as a belated birthday gift to Anna, as a comfort to myself, and as a loving nod to James because it includes so many things I either borrowed from or talked about with them.
> 
> This is technically part of the [Ash and Salt](http://archiveofourown.org/series/249448) 'verse and takes place in the year after the main story, but it's just Date Night in Val Royeaux. It stands on its own.

Val Royeaux, in early summer.

On the hills outside the city apple orchards flower in white and pink, like dawn clouds come to roost on the green slopes. Spring-planted wheat turns from silver to gold under days of sun and rain, and people from all over the Heartlands flock to the bannered markets for the week-long summer fair.

The Inquisition party is pared-down this time, on one of their bi- or triannual trips to the capital. Upon arrival they scatter for a while: Josephine to argue trade and treaty and meet with friends and with attachés who've left her tutelage, Sera into the warrens of the City Below on secret Red Jenny business, and Dorian into furtive meetings arranged along the previous months, while the Inquisitor plunges herself gratefully into the depths of the university library.

Bull checks on old acquaintances, sniffs out possible jobs for his boys, plays bodyguard to Josephine on one occasion--for the intimidation factor of a looming qunari on skittish merchant princes rather than real danger to her life and limb--and roams the fair. It spreads across the narrow cobblestone streets without rhyme or reason, a chaos of bodies and languages and wares from the world over.

He finds a Vashoth spice seller with bitter, heady teas from Seheron, which he doesn't buy, only breathes in the strange aroma of calm amid old dreams of ruin. As he dawdles, the seller greets him in fluent Qunlat and a half-smile that doesn't seek his coin. Hours later, he ends up in the caravan yard after sundown, sitting beside her wagon and drinking millet ale from a battered cask. Her brother makes robber's mutton, roasting an entire sheep stuffed with herbs and tangy onions in a coal pit dug beside their fire.

He hasn't spoken so much Qunlat in years. Their accents have notes of Rivaini and hints of Antivan, the cadences of a language only heard within the family. Their parents fled south decades ago to settle in Antiva, but that's all they volunteer on their lineage. They chuckle at his stories of his mercenary days, offer tales of their own from the road, and he doesn't ask how they forged the supply links that brought Seheron fare into their riveted chests.

Dorian's up when Bull wanders back to the inn at last; his letters and coffee and breakfast fruit are all over the maplewood table. He taps ink from his quill, signs a sheet and then looks up.

"Good morning." A quirked brow, over an eye that shows a hint of sleep debt.

The night is slow to let Bull go, but he pauses there. "Sorry. Should've sent a message."

"I had other sources." Dorian dashes fine sand onto the parchment to help the ink dry. While he may be putting on a veneer of ease, Bull knows what honest concern looks like on him. He puts two and two together.

"Sera. You actually saw her?"

"She's sleeping off a heinous hangover on Lavellan's settee. She'd spotted you with, and I quote, 'One of 'em Vashoth women, white braid, well fit. Wish I'd seen her first.' "

For a brief moment, Bull feels his thoughts stutter and stall. As Dorian's eyes soften and his own tired mind snaps to the occasion, he steps closer, and Dorian hooks a hand under his pauldron strap and pulls him down for a kiss.

"I told her perhaps you'd make introductions if she asked nicely."

"Sera and 'please' aren't exactly on speaking terms."

"She did save you from me commandeering Lavellan's cadre of discreet bodyguards to track you down." Dorian means the half a dozen of Spymaster Charter's best that are most often at the Inquisitor's heels. A compromise between her dislike of any pomp and the necessity of protecting her. So Dorian has worried, and Bull does owe him something.

"Had a bit of a weird night." He nudges Dorian's chin, because his hair is combed and oiled, and that's anything but an invitation to run fingers through it. "I'd almost forgotten there were things north of the Free Marches that I missed."

"As long as you're back in one piece. You'll tell me about it later, I hope." Dorian nods, as if to settle the matter for them both, and turns to a stack of papers. "I intend to be done with Lady Decima by midday, and _then_ I'll have a moment to breathe."

Diplomacy suits Dorian better than he'd be liable to admit. Maevaris has been gaining tentative traction for her reforms in the Imperium, and Dorian's name is being mentioned in courts all along the border, for all that it remains dangerous for him to return to Tevinter proper.

Bull lets him back to his letter, kneading the heel of his palm over his eye. It wants to slide shut, and the rest of him finds it a pretty decent idea, too.

"Sounds like I ought to sleep some before that. I kind of like the thought of being awake with you on this trip."

Dorian's eyes brighten. "I know, _amatus_. On that topic..." He taps the sand from the parchment.

"Yeah?"

"If you have no other plans, I took the liberty of making some." He sounds both warm and a touch guarded; a conundrum Bull would latch on to, were he more awake.

Bull makes a hum of _I'm listening_ as he pours water into the washbasin. The copper bowl shows drying tracks of water; Dorian hasn't been awake that long.

"Are these the Sera kind of plans?" he asks when Dorian doesn't offer up more details. "First you hear giggles from the tavern rafters, the next morning all the stitches keeping your buckles in place have been worked loose?"

"We were never going to discuss that again."

"Fine, fine." Still a good story, though. "You gonna tell me?"

"Maker, spare me from men with no appreciation for the trouble that goes into surprises." Silver chimes as Dorian tugs up the ceramic bowl holding his rings and slips them onto his fingers. "I'd like to leave here at the evening bell, if that suits you. Wear something presentable."

Bull halts his scrubbing of the itchy seam of a horn. At least Val Royeaux counts as civilisation in the sense that he's got a fresh reserve of balm for them. "You mean a shirt."

"Ideally."

Bull sighs, more for show than from any real exasperation. Dorian gathers his things, tilts his face up for another kiss--almost broken by a yawn--when Bull comes to see him to the door, and hurries off.

Bull falls into the unmade bed, oddly roomy without Dorian sprawling inevitably into his space. He sleeps clean through the uproarious morning concert of the birds in the inn courtyard.

*

Val Royeaux is packed with chantries beyond the Grand Cathedral: tiny neighborhood shrines and dilapidated houses of worship from villages that've been swallowed by the city over centuries. Their bells speak the time in a welling of sound four times a day, the humbler steeples and towers taking their cues from the magnificent clamour of the Cathedral. The wave of noise rolls over the inn, located near the university quarter, as Dorian dips his head into Lavellan's room to let her know they'll be out for the evening.

"Please enjoy yourselves," she says before returning to her pitched conversation with Josephine. "It's about time."

"You better not make me disappoint her," Bull says, once Dorian's shut the door.

"If I do, I'll consider that entirely my own failing." Dorian lets his eyes dwell on the vacant corridor tipping down into the stairwell. He smells of sandalwood, his hair kinking at the ends under the sheen of fragrant oil, and he dressed in his usual silk and soft leather with the same light air of mystery he's cultivated since morning.

"Look, I'm not that clueless." It's a gentle prod. "We're not going to the waterfront to drink rat piss with the lowlives, like in the old days. 'Wear something presentable.'"

"Well." Dorian runs a silver-glimmering knuckle over the laces of Bull's linen shirt, open at the collar, much to Dorian's approval. "Summerday passed, and we were up to our knees in lowlives on the Denerim road. You could regard this a belated present."

Summerday passed, and Dorian evidently thought of other things than uneasy ghosts. For Bull, southern traditions are learned, not assumed, but the connection hardly escapes him. Outside of the personal weight on it for Dorian, Summerday marks unions and reunions, fresh beginnings, betrothals, renewals.

"Ah," Bull says.

"The Antivan Quarter. Where, incidentally, you can also find what Tevinter influences this city has."

"Hiding behind the washed-up assassins." Bull laughs, because humour is his best refuge against the ungainly tenderness of the moment. "All right."

"So," Dorian says. A fidget twists across his shoulders. "I thought, music, proper food, a view of the old city at dusk? It's been described to death in Cassandra's books. I confess to a mild fancy to see the real thing."

"And then find a secluded spot and--" Bull has feeling like seeing the gleam of an enemy mage's glyph a fraction before his boot sinks into it, and he pulls back sharply. They've fucked in corridors and alleys, behind trees and atop the Bannorn on the war table, for the laughing, breathless dare of it.

The last thing Dorian's offer needs in answer is any reference to a hurried, dark tumble, thinly veiled from observation. Not when...

"Shit." Bull's hands, fumbling at Dorian's sleeves, curl around his elbows. "You're _courting_ me."

"Am I?" Dorian meets Bull's eye at last. He almost manages to sound bemused, whimsical; the tinge of relief underneath only just gives him away. "Should I be sending, what was it, three goats and a sheaf of wheat to your second-in-command as a declaration of intent?"

"Based on tavern gossip, only if you wanna look like you stumbled out of the Southron Hills two days ago."

"Caught between boorish traditions and lowbrow fiction clichés. Such are my options."

Somehow they have yet to move more than five strides from Lavellan's door. Bull leans in. "What kind of music?"

"There's a troupe from Caimen Brea playing in the Plaza of Fountains." Dorian hovers somewhere between frothy and hopeful. "I'm told they have dancers, as well. Do you still want to go?"

Candid, and Bull wishes he could say, unwarranted. But it's not. Every inch of ground they've won, every comfort that lies as a given between them, has been earned.

"Yeah." He feels Dorian's sigh whisper across his throat. "Sounds great."

*

They end up hurrying a little, but once they leave the main avenue, being on foot turns from ducking between jostling carts and nervous horses into the swiftest way of navigating. Val Royeaux is built in layers, the statues of forgotten Anointed from the Steel Age brushing shoulders with the freshly painted sign of a hopeful elven cordwainer or the cluttered front of a potter's workshop. New storeys teeter up atop ancient houses as space for construction has got ever more crowded.

The Plaza of Fountains overlooks the river that bisects the city, and is so named for the group of elaborate stone fountains laid along the sides of the fan-shaped space. Most of their statues stand dry and streaked with soot and bird droppings. In contrast, the fountain commissioned by Empress Celene, in the shape of giant carved lilies, adds its flowing notes as a background to the music.

There's a gathering of fair-goers and city dwellers filling the plaza. Some have brought their own stools, blankets or cloaks to sit on, others seek seats on the rims of the fountains. The troupe has erected a light tent on the side of the open space that seems to serve as a stage for the occasional performance.

"It's a little rougher than I pictured," Dorian says while they pick out a place to sit.

"Tevinter music probably doesn't make it to the soirées in Orlais." Bull ends up sitting on the plinth of a headless chevalier, her marble blade lofted towards the sky. If he backs up to lean against her shield, he can straighten his legs. "You should mention that to Vivienne."

"I shall." They're meeting her tomorrow, once she's free from an errand in the imperial court.

"Wouldn't know what to do with fancier than this, anyway." The upside of climbing up to the statue is that they have a good view of the musicians. A girl of maybe sixteen is blowing a floating melody on a small woodwind whose name Bull doesn't know, the tune a prelude while the others bring out their drums, bells and lutes.

"In that case, I don't mind at all." Dorian crouches down on his right, folding his short cloak to serve as a cushion for them both. "Not that I'd subject you to Tevinter court music. Awful, pompous droning, choked in so much tradition that Archon Hessarian could wake from the dead and not find it changed in the least."

"Undead magister lords sound like just the thing to liven it up."

Dorian muffles a noise of indignant delight into his arm. "Oh, do hush. They're starting."

The girl is joined by a youth with a lute much like the one Dorian keeps in the library; Dorian leans forward, a frown of concentration crossing his brow. Around them, the audience quiets. The plaza is hemmed by the oldest parts of the city, and the incessant sounds of its daily life are muted as they slither through the twisting, turning streets.

The musicians play through the falling evening. There's a modicum of dancing, by the flutist girl and another, who's dressed as a young man. They act out a folk tale that Dorian summarises to Bull in an undertone in the first moments of the piece. At the end of his explanation, Dorian neglects to move back again, settling his side against Bull's, in a long and pliant line.

"It's not quite as in Minrathous." Dorian's words aren't a criticism, but something more dry and wistful.

"She's real good, though." Bull makes what he hopes is a discreet gesture at the girl dancing the man's part--it's a tale of star-crossed love, involving class difference and what he's sure fails to serve as a cautionary moral. She spins her partner, lets her bend back near to the point of falling, and pulls her back up in one supple sweep. "Fighter training, I'd bet. Coupled with a sense of rhythm."

"Old habits, hm?" Dorian squeezes his hand. He's not quite sure when he drew Dorian's fingers into a loose clasp, but Dorian hasn't seen fit to reclaim them.

 _Someone's all but lost his_ , Bull doesn't say in answer, because way to ruin the moment. He thinks it instead, with a kind of warm wonderment.

When the music fades and the girls separate to wind into the audience, one holding the cap that covered her pinned hair, the other a woven basket, Dorian sidles down to drop a shallow handful of royals on top of the silver and copper in the cap. Even from his vantage, Bull sees the open surprise on the dancer's face, before she bends her head and folds into a jauntily exaggerated stage courtesy.

"Didn't know you were that impressed," he says, low, as Dorian takes his seat again.

Dorian laughs, the sound small, even self-conscious. "Mm. It's been a long time."

Bull ponders last night, tawny ale and accented voices, and the phantoms of long-lost home that sigh sweet in your ear not least because they're only echoes of the real. Memory is like that. He touches Dorian's back with a flattened palm, and Dorian, an unwitting, welcome reminder of the here and now, leans back into him.

Below them people sit braced against each other, siblings with their feet in each other's laps, fathers with their sleepy children draped against their shoulders, couples hand in hand. Bull knows he draws inescapable notice--not even attention, because if there's anywhere people run across every other race on a weekly basis, it's Val Royeaux. He, and therefore Dorian, have been remarked upon and accepted as part of the scenery.

Dorian knows that same thing. His head is a familiar weight against Bull's shoulder.

On the stage, the oldest of the lutists, a stooping man with his ashen hair pulled into a braid, plucks the first notes of a meandering melody from his instrument. He plays alone, his shadow a slant of blue at his feet. The sound that he summons spins up warm and full as the lengthening light.

"Oh," Dorian says, no louder than a breath. He cants his head back, eyes shut, a divot of focus between his brows.

In that moment he's somewhere far away, and there's peace on his face.

The piece seems familiar, as if Bull had heard any number of less expert renditions in taverns and on street corners in days past. The old man is a master, though, and the solitude of the lute makes plain the beauty of his playing. It moves from resonant, almost mournful notes to ones that flit high and silvery over the plaza. Dorian sits quiet, his long fingers moving above his leg in mimicry of the notes. Even submerged in the music, he can't stop his mind from working--or from remembering.

Bull watches Dorian as the music streams through its climbs and valleys, filling the evening air, low and pure. Watches him and listens, and pins down another scrap of understanding about this man, who's dearer to him than he sometimes knows what to do with.

Maybe the ebbs and flows of the piece hide a story. The tune itself remains trembling in his ear even as the musician's hands still and the lute falls silent.

It takes a moment for the applause to begin. Dorian joins in heartily, with a shake of his head to disturb his own reverie. Something stirs in Bull at the sight of him, something heavy and free, grounding and uplifting. The troupe gathers around the old lutist to take their bows, to stomping of feet and shouted appreciation in at least three tongues. Bull adds an admiring snatch of Qunlat, well aware that it gets lost in the commotion, except that Dorian cants a half-inquiring glance at him.

They don't talk as they leave. If they walked any closer together, they'd be tripping on one another's feet on every other step.

*

"He played The Celebrant's Song," Dorian offers at last, when they've sat down on the second floor of the tavern. It's almost the first word he's spoken since they left the plaza, other than a short exchange with the tavern keeper. "Not... what I was expecting."

"The Celebrant, like in the constellation? Satinalis." Bull tosses a cushion into a corner to have room for his leg. Dorian sits cross-legged, easy as you please, but Bull would rather not fold his knee that deep. He has to grasp for the last time he'd have sat on the floor to eat indoors. The alcove, separated from the rest of the common room by a diamond-patterned lattice screen, is stacked with flat hempen cushions.

A couple of local women nurse goblets of wine across the room, and a party with a Marcher slant to their merry simmer of chatter sprawls out by the stairs, but their corner table by the balcony is nearly secluded. To his right, six copper bowls with candles hang from a tall, branched brass holder. Some fragrant floral oil has been poured into the tallow: the smell wafts in the trickling smoke.

In a pinch, the holder would make for a decent weapon. The balcony has a staircase down to the courtyard, and the door leading there is propped open to let in the balmy twilight.

"You're checking for exits." Dorian picks up the iron teapot. There are two servers, quick and light on their feet. The pots and cups might nearly have floated in on the evening breeze.

"There's 'Vint crap on every side," Bull throws back, so wry that it becomes the joke it's meant to be.

"Darling," Dorian says, in the double-feint tone that makes light of how much he means it, "I've never known you to enter a room without sweeping it. I rely on it."

He pours the tea and the milk in equal measure. They both steam a filmy haze of heat into the air. Bull reaches to take the offered cup, and he lets his fingers dwell on Dorian's before withdrawing. _Darling_ , huh. While they sit in the most Tevinter tavern Dorian could dig up in the city.

"Yeah." Cloves and cinnamon, and the sweet sear of witherstalk flower--and now Bull's distracting himself with the tea. "Finish the story, hm?"

"Ah, yes. The musical side road. There's a song that goes with the piece, but it tends to be played without the lyrics." 

"What, are they rude or something? Didn't think 'Vints balked at a little ribaldry."

"Quite the opposite." The vestiges of the wistful mood shroud Dorian still. "They're horribly sentimental."

"Seems they made an impression on you."

"The lutist did." Dorian taps a fingernail on the rim of the cup. When Bull makes an urging hum, he continues, "Once, in a nameless city in the old Imperium, there was a musician. He--or sometimes she--owned no house, made no family, but lived for his lyre alone. He wandered the streets and played day after day to those who cared and those who did not. His lyre sang for the weary and the hopeless, the toiling and the idle, and sometimes, for those who felt as he did."

Reflected against Dorian's other stories of his homeland, Bull gets why this one might've drawn a censorious eye. Dorian, though, has that distant light in his eyes that comes to them on occasion, when memory calls him strong enough.

"At least tell me there's a happy ending." Not that Bull has any great hope of that.

"It depends." Dorian drinks, wets his lips. "I've heard three different ones. The moralistic, the depressing, and the one I rather liked. It's in pre-Chantry Tevene, I can't make it rhyme in Common, but..."

"Give me the gist, I'll work it out."

Dorian's answer is interrupted by one of the servers, who lowers herself onto one knee and deftly places half a dozen earthenware bowls, glazed with teal and brilliant red and heaped with different dishes, onto the low table between them. They let her finish, pour the wine and dilute it with water, and she leaves without further ado.

"I take it this is a done thing." Bull glances after her. He's seen his share of minor courts and the haunts of the nobility south of the Imperium. This place is far from _fancy_ , a simple and elegant setup done with enough northern flair to fool the locals and comfort the travellers. Next to that, her silence is jarring.

"In Tevinter it'd be a given," Dorian says with some acerbity. "Your betters are talking, and they don't need your voice souring the dulcet sounds of their own."

"Right. I'm just gonna assume they do it as a courtesy." If they're going to talk about 'Vint things, Bull would rather they were more pleasant ones. It's weird, almost, to pass through these loose pieces of a vast tradition, prised from the great whole and scattered far. At least the food smells good.

"So, the ending." Dorian toys with his fork--the tavern _is_ posh enough to provide cutlery--and his brow furrows with thought. "They say, sometimes, that though the musician grew cold in the winter and hungry before the harvest, he was the happiest man in the city. Because he played his lyre, and so nurtured what he loved best. Music is a living thing: it can't be captured or kept, only sounded out into the world."

They spend a while piling food onto their plates, flatbread and olives, grilled cheeses, rolls of prophet's laurel leaves, stuffed with rice and mint and lemon pepper, and small meatballs so full of garlic they scald the tongue. This is what the milk tea is for, Dorian explains, to soothe the bite of the spicier dishes.

Bull chuckles, mutters something sardonic about delicate palates, and ponders as they eat. About Dorian, about where the evening's taken them so far, and about fragments and shadows, slices of the left and the loved.

"Why this?" he finally asks, over the second set of pretty, bite-sized food in the same colourful bowls. They've eaten in mellow silence. The sunset over the old city has come and gone in the meantime, until the light faded to the glow of the candles on the table.

"This?" That lone word intimates Dorian understands that the topic's shifted from the scarce remarks over the food. The food's damn great. Bull might've held his tongue and enjoyed that. "Oh, _this_. The conflicted nostalgia."

Well. It's not like Bull ever told Dorian where he strayed the previous night. They can still, after all these years, cross paths in the most abrupt of ways.

Dorian uncrosses his ankles. "Because this is the best part."

The pause is for effect and for something more. Bull fills Dorian's empty goblet, foregoing the water at Dorian's absent-minded gesture.

"I talk about Tevinter a great deal these days. I miss Mae, and my mother, and a few others. But all I talk about are the problems, and how to solve them."

In the fickle way of memory, Bull drifts back to cracking open one of the spice seller's boxes and stifling a gasp at the honeyed waft of dried whiteflower and unfermented tea. On Seheron, Vasaad used to go to the tea pickers and the herbalists and make his own blends; he'd tuck a cloth bag into his belt when the call came and find a pot for brewing when the first lull fell.

"I wanted..." Dorian stirs the wine in the goblet, dark ripples lapping against the rim. "I wanted to remember some of the better things. And share them with you. Was that flagrantly selfish of me?"

Bull was raised with one dominant theme: if the _basra_ are the ignorant waiting for the Qun, then Tevinter is the enemy standing in the way of that illumination. _My dear Bull_ , Vivienne remarked to him once, in a benevolent sort of mood, _Perhaps you need only to look at your choice of companions to be sure of where you stand._

He'll never be fond of the Imperium, but it sent Krem tumbling his way. It gave him Dorian, who chose to stay.

He raises his half-full goblet and clinks it against Dorian's. "Here's to the best part."

Dorian smiles one of his rare, unstudied smiles, with the joy catching him unawares, his dark eyes bright with it. Bull feels an answering grin tug at his mouth. They drink, set down their wine, and Bull says, quite without forethought, "There's a stall at the fair we should drop by. If tomorrow's good for you."

The smile lingers on Dorian's face, which is a manner of playing dirty that'd hardly occurred to Bull before. "I'll make the time. Would this be about the company that kept you out all night?"

"I guess it's about this." He gestures at the remains of the second course and means the evening at large. "Most days, I think Tevinter's pretty shit, but I see you fight tooth and nail for it, any way you can. Because this is what you see when you look at it."

"Enough to make a man reconsider centuries of ingrained mutual loathing?" Dorian slips back to airy charm, picking up his plate again to scoop up the last of the charcoal-roasted lamb.

"Hold the frippery for just a bit. I'm making a point here."

"I know." Needless as it is, there's a touch of contrition in Dorian's eyes. "So tell me, what would we find at this mysterious stall?"

"Something worth bringing out of Seheron." Such fragile things. A melody on a plaza at dusk, or the smell of a drink set in his hands on a wet night watch, spanning the chasm of long years. What more is there, in the end?

"First thing in the morning then," Dorian says, and Bull loves him a little more for it. "I'd be honoured."

That phrasing would be worth a little needling, if Bull didn't instead think, _It's you who honour me_.

They finish the food and the wine. The candles burn golden inside their thin shells of tallow. Dorian leaves coin on the brass plate under the candles, and they take the balcony stairs out into the night.

*

Some blocks past the tavern they come to the edge of the hill that holds most of the Antivan Quarter. A stone rail, topped by the faded, life-sized statues of Orlesian war heroes at regular intervals, guards a steep drop down towards the harbour. With an enterprising air, Dorian hoists himself to sit on the broad banister, his back to one of the statues. Bull contents himself with leaning against the rail.

They missed the purple dusk lauded by poets and sensational novelists alike, but the greater moon rises nearly full from the sea, veiled in hazy cloud. The harbour is a black mass of rooftops and chimneys, a lantern or a torch cutting the darkness here and there. On the street below, someone's slurring through a patchy version of that tavern song about Andraste's mabari. Other than that, everything lies hushed. The wind brings in the smell of brine from the bay.

"Maybe it's true, what Red used to say." It was a rare moment that you'd see Leliana drop the mask of the spymaster, but now and then you might coax out an anecdote, and this city featured in the better part of them.

Drawn from his contemplation of the view, Dorian glances at Bull. "A chancy proposition. I'm listening."

"That Val Royeaux kinda has its own character." Bull's been through here dozens of times. It looked like a human city, one among many. "Something about its soul actually being in its stones."

"I am obliged to note its unbearably Orlesian bent," Dorian says, "but you may be onto something there."

"Had the time to look around, this time." It's a very un-Qunari idea: settlements are for the use of their inhabitants, maintained for the people, discarded at the demand of new circumstance. Buildings or bridges, towers or walls have no inherent worth.

He's shaping his own truths now. Dorian turns towards him the rest of the way, sensing the dip in the conversation, and Bull makes himself veer back to the present. "Had the right company, too."

"Mm-hm?" Dorian's hum is undercut by a tint of rapt attention. It's not precisely new, Dorian being so mindful, but he's been doing it in nudges and glimpses since they left the inn.

"Yeah. It's..." Bull smooths the word over his tongue. "Nice."

A burst of dry laughter thrums from Dorian. "Nice, as in 'tolerable'? 'Not entirely abysmal'? I'll have to try harder next time."

"No." Bull would only have to reach out to touch Dorian, on the knee or the shoulder. He quells the desire: the small, soft span between them seems to have a point to it. "The other sense. Like the deep breath you take when you're home after a hard job, only spread out over a few hours. With better food, too."

A beat of silence. " _Venhedis._ Count yourself lucky that I am very fond of you."

"I know," Bull says, because it's only the truth. "You've been telling me all evening."

"Based on my observations, and extensive second-hand sources," Dorian says, amusement lacing into affection in his tone, "that is the point of courting someone."

Bull could say a lot to that: that he meant it as a gibe, that Dorian's not obliged to wine and dine him just to whittle away an evening together, that there's no need. They all fall wrong, harsh against the clement mood: Dorian laughing against his arm; leaning forward as if he could drink the sound of the lute out of the air; his fingers brushing against Bull's own, the fragrant tea passing from hand to hand.

"Works for me," he says at last. His fingers settle on top of Dorian's leather-clad knee, and Dorian raises a hand to wrap around the side of his palm. They're almost at eye level of each other, with Dorian sitting on the rail. Bull would only have to lean in a handspan.

So he does, close enough for their brows to skim together, for Dorian's hair to tickle his nose, and mutters, "I want to kiss you."

A simple thing. All but a given. Dorian gives a faint, sweet sound of surprise, and then his mouth is on Bull's own and his hands clasp the back of Bull's neck to hold him close. Dorian can still get reticent about blatant displays in public, but tonight wasn't like that; they both circled and curved, content to touch and then swerve away.

This is a balm and a challenge, a slow, lazy slide of contact, Dorian's tongue a flick of heat on the inside of his lip. Bull pulls him fast to his own body. The cold edge of the banister against his hip is a small bother compared to how Dorian tilts up and into him, happy and artless.

"More than the once, I hope." Dorian's words catch. "Possibly in places beside my mouth, talented as I am with it."

"I might." Bull withdraws the couple of inches necessary for talking. "Seems only fair."

"That wasn't quite--mmh." Dorian seems to decide his argument can wait as Bull kisses him again, with the same languid purpose. There's an unsought reassurance in the weight of his arm around Bull's neck. Dorian reaches up to kiss his cheek, to press a tender, close mark on the flail scar; Bull breathes deep and unsteady, still under Dorian's mouth for a few long heartbeats.

Then, because the angle is all but an offer, he licks a wet staggered line along Dorian's neck. The clasp at Dorian's collar comes easily undone, and Dorian's pulse leaps against his mouth.

"Bull." Distraction strains at Dorian's voice. "I--"

"Yeah?" He spreads his hand on the front of Dorian's shoulder, in contact but at rest.

"We're not balancing any scales here. Not that I plan to remain unsatisfied, but..." An airy chuckle, something self-ironic to it. "I meant today for you."

 _Seems only fair._ They're balancing on the pliable edge of old comfort and whatever new tinge tonight has brought into their byplay.

"All right, 'Vint." Another facet of the ease between them, that tart moniker long since turned into an endearment. Bull tugs Dorian up, onto his knees on the banister, so Bull actually has to look up at him. "Finish what you started."

If he knows anything, he knows this: He's used to being a constant to others, a fixed point to return to. But he'd trust Dorian to lead him damn near anywhere he cared to go.

Dorian dips his head and smothers Bull's half-feigned surprise with a kiss. His fingers press firm to the line of Bull's jaw, the kiss wild and messy, insistent. Dorian's breath is shallow and hot on his cheek as it tapers off. Bull laughs, and want makes it a ragged sound.

"Finish what I started, hm?" Dorian worries his lower lip. It's a blatant tease, and it's working. "Here's a respectful proposition: I take you back to our borrowed bed, tie you to it with whatever will hold you, and then you may have me any way you like. But, _amatus_ , this is the caveat." His hand curls gentle against Bull's mouth. "I am yours. You tell me what you want."

"Given it a lot of thought, have you?" The words buck against his teeth, hoarse and not half as steady as he meant.

"I found it an excellent motivation for getting through the week. However, it is the kind of mischief that one can't quite plot alone."

"I'm sure you _plotted_ just fine. We'd, uh, better find someplace with a door that locks before you say another word, because I can't promise to listen for trouble if you keep talking."

"I intend to do more than talk." Dorian prods Bull backwards enough that he can drop down from the rail. "Unless, of course, you'd prefer me not to."

The cant of his head and the impetuous gleam in his eyes say one thing, his solid grip of Bull's hand somewhat another. They're not at odds, that lust and that solace, and that's what has Bull's breath scraping in his throat and heat sliding down his spine.

"Let me think," he says, "and start walking."

*

A borrowed bed, near midnight.

The better part of their clothes, tossed on chairs, boots kicked off under the table. The banked coals in the hearth exude a slight, constant warmth into the night-cooled room. The glowstone pried from Dorian's staff and set in a shallow bowl serves as a lantern, throwing soft shadow and curling light across the walls.

They end up resorting to a few of Dorian's belts, which Dorian insists on padding with a pair of scarves, as if Bull can't handle a little chafing. The cloth around his wrists will make it easier to slip free, too.

"Oh?" Dorian gives Bull a meaningfully arched brow, then turns back to looping the belt through the headboard. "Is that a thing I should worry about?"

"You're the one bedding the old spy here." The headboard has decorative vertical slats cut into it, wide enough for Bull to slide his hand through. He flexes his fingers as Dorian tucks the buckle fast.

"All right?"

"Yeah." Some night they'll do this another way, and Bull will make Dorian work for his compliance, make it a game in itself to get them where they've now come by eager mutual effort. Right now, the quiet route is fine. More than fine.

Dorian takes his right hand, nibbles at the thumb, kisses the first knuckle, the second, the third. Catching him under the jaw, Bull finds his mouth one more time. _I am yours_ , Dorian said, but it works both ways. The kiss aches in its heat and precision, both of their focus only upon it until want of breath tugs them apart.

"Fuck," Bull rather husks. "Get on with it, will you?"

"If you only stop interrupting."

"Not a chance," Bull says, feels Dorian's eyes upon him, slitted with thought and desire, and puts the lie to his own words by yielding his hand to Dorian's calm, clever fingers.

After some final shifts of the pillows, and a yank to test the hold of the looped and twisted belt, Dorian strips the rest of the way, with almost lamentable efficiency. Before Bull snaps to the lost opportunity, he's back in the bed, though, warm and naked and marvellous. A pass of his hand feeds the flickering glowstone, brightening the light a notch.

Bull closes one bound hand tight around the edge of a wooden bar. Breathes the smell of linen and the buckwheat stuffing of the pillows, and the sandalwood and faint sweat on Dorian's skin.

"Comfortable?" Dorian asks, in familiar echo of the same question Bull has put to him time and time again.

He hums affirmation. The want burns low, still, though the chance press of Dorian's arm into his side sends a swell of awareness through him. "Been a while."

Not many people in the world that he's trusted enough. The tamassrans, because it was their function and they had its mastery, and when they deemed he needed his watchful eyes blindfolded and his restless hands pinned, that was what he was given. A long-gone lover or two, along his years in the south. Dorian, now and into whatever days they have together.

"It has been," Dorian agrees, whether on _since I last tied you up_ or on _since we last fucked_. He slides his palm over Bull's side, knuckles lingering on his ribs. "So, my heart, where do you want me?"

It nearly is a casual inquiry, if not for the murmured note of the epithet.

Making his fingers slacken, sinking into the bed, opening himself to the question, Bull shuts his eye. "Closer. So I can feel you."

Dorian doesn't laugh; the sound's too soft. He leans into Bull, one leg thrown over him, until his forearms are rested on Bull's shoulders and their bodies pressed together from groin to chest. "This way?"

"Fantastic, if this was a sleeping arrangement." Bull slots a knee between Dorian's legs. The movement shifts Dorian's hip against his half-hard cock, which doesn't help his barely quelled need but does make his point as Dorian gasps. "You're a contrary bastard, you know that."

Dorian slides up to kiss him in a sinuous drag of skin against skin, his short nails twinges of sensation on Bull's shoulders, his mouth slow, hot and demanding. Whatever curse stems to his lips is stifled into the contact, his breath escaping in a thin trace. It's only Dorian's weight that keeps his hips to the bed.

When Dorian lets him up for air, he has one hand on Bull's horn, holding his head at a cant not uncomfortable but exposed. "I can make my own way here," he says, "but that's not what we agreed."

"Yeah." Bull wets his lips, stinging with the edge of Dorian's teeth. There's three rushing currents running together in him: want, wariness, and a deeper, more elusive need. "Fuck, Dorian. _Kadan._ Just touch me, put your hands on me until I beg to have you."

A hand on his face. Dorian's ink-dark eyes watching him. For a moment he only looks, like he could dwell there for hours, then his finger paints the shape of Bull's mouth. "I have you," he says, soft and sober. "You're safe here."

Bull makes a hushed _hah_ , part chortle, part admission. Dorian smiles, his eyes half hooded, and slinks down along Bull's body in a teasing, mellow caress.

*

Moments and impressions, blending one into the other.

Dorian spends a long and deliberate spell kissing every tender scar and every soft, remembered contour and corner. Bull wraps his fingers into the wood of the headboard, drags hard on the bindings when Dorian's fingers slide into the joint of his leg and body. The leather creaks, but holds, and Dorian chuckles wickedly against his belly. His breaths are deep, haggard things, the air thick and sweet at once.

Groping for his hand, Dorian grasps the side of his left one. Their thumbs and second fingers form a strange, tight clasp as Dorian nuzzles the side of his head, whispers _You're safe_ and _You're good_ and _Look at me, love_ in his ear. 

When Bull does open his eye, hazy and wide, Dorian's hand slips free. It trails down his arm and his side without rush, and now Dorian's indulging himself a tad bit, because nothing gets him hot quite the same way as Bull watching him.

Not that Bull minds. Dorian spent a lot of time hiding, even with him. As long as there's something good to Bull's unwavering eye on him, then let it be. The dash of dishevelled arousal on him doesn't hurt at all; he's on his knees astride Bull's thigh, his breath trembling in his throat. He lets his hand settle on his own leg, next to the smooth curve of his cock, quite on purpose.

"Tell me," Dorian says. And it shouldn't be hard, it should be the easiest of things, when Dorian already holds his heart. "Or shall I help you along? I'd have to forgive a few muddled thoughts right now."

"Watch it, 'Vint," Bull grits out, amusement lancing through the twisting longing.

"I am." Dorian draws two appraising fingers down his neck, sweeps them across his clavicle. "I have all night. How is your patience?"

Profound, under most circumstances, but Bull can't help the jerk of his hips as Dorian's fingertips shave teasingly close to his cock. If it were Dorian spread out before him, he could list a hundred filthy things to do to him, and then do them, with care and purpose until Dorian couldn't stand to wait another heartbeat.

_Tell me. I am yours._

Bull exhales raggedly. He has to drag in another gulp of air for words. "Come--come up here. My mouth on you. Please."

"Oh," Dorian says, a threading wisp of want, and Bull feels a little smug, anyway. Then, in a more even timbre, "And if you need the watchword? Tap three times?"

Turning his hand, Bull claps his palm against the headboard, and Dorian nods, satisfied, his shoulders settling.

It proves somewhat awkward, the combination of Dorian on his knees above Bull and his hands tied over his head. Dorian braces a hand on the headboard and leans in gamely, balanced on his hand and knees. Bull laughs, because shit, there's something funny to Dorian's cock--Dorian's beautiful, slightly left-slanted cock--slipping on the corner of his mouth as if neither of them could quite aim.

With a mumbled oath, Dorian reaches down to guide him and cants his hip to help. The curse grows into a moan, low and wanton, as he presses into Bull's mouth, the angle odd but everything else familiar. Bull scrapes his tongue across the flushed head. The way Dorian twitches, tensed muscles shivering, goes through Bull as a jolt of urgency. Dorian thrusts his hips experimentally and Bull lets his lips and teeth rasp along the shaft.

"Oh, oh," Dorian says again, his fingers on Bull's head, curved with tension. "Bull, oh, I may have--entirely negl--" Bull tucks his tongue up to his palate so it catches the place where the crown joins the shaft. Dorian's voice crumbles into a whimper. His movement doesn't stop; a deep, leisurely tempo, paced by both their breaths.

There seems to be only this: the salt and velvet of Dorian's cock, the smell of his arousal, the occasional twinge of muscle that reminds Bull to work his fingers. Desire throbs through him in a heartbeat echo. He groans around Dorian, who shudders and hums and strokes his brow in answer.

It might go on like that, steady and intimate, until one or the other of them gives.

Then, too soon, sharpishly, Dorian draws back with a soft slick sound as he pulls free. Bull swallows, reflexively, but before he can ask, Dorian shuffles down so he can see Bull's face.

"Neglected to mention," he says, with dry emphasis that counts as a feat given his sweat-damp face and flushed cheeks, "how I do adore your mouth."

"Didn't have to stop." The words threaten to stick in Bull's throat. Dorian looks like he might come with the next glancing touch on his cock, and Bull knows he's not much better. The bed's fine, and Dorian fussed over the pillows for far too long, but he shifts again with restless need.

"I rather did, if I'm to keep my end of the bargain." Dorian dips his head to press a quick wet kiss on his mouth. Without thinking, Bull strains after him, gasping with the loss more than the teasing.

Dorian blinks, heavy-lidded, and kisses him again. For a rushing moment, Bull imagines Dorian tasting himself in his mouth, licking the familiar bitterness from his tongue. He lingers close above, once the kiss ends.

It's a question. One more in a gentle and irresistible line of inquiry. _What do you want?_

"You," Bull says, because nothing else seems to suffice. His feet chafe against the linens. He clenches his hands, suppressing the urge to test the leather and buckles. _You're safe here._

"Yes?" Dorian waits, still and near.

"I want you." Bull turns his head, much as he can, into the curve of Dorian's hand, to mouth at the heel of his palm. "So I'm asking. You, inside me."

Something akin to surprise moves like cloud shadow over Dorian's face, giving way to his eyes cinching with heat and affection. He pushes himself up, crouching on Bull's right, and smooths his hand down Bull's neck. "A moment."

It takes several, with Dorian's oil-slickened fingers circling and turning and stroking between Bull's legs. He's breathtakingly careful, which breaks a stammered curse or three from Bull, his hips bucking under Dorian's other, restraining hand. Dorian laughs. "Oh, love. Allow me this. Let me be good to you."

"You are," Bull insists, even if his voice hitches halfway at the steady, purposeful push of Dorian's fingers up and in. "Ah, so fucking good."

"Have a care," Dorian murmurs. "That could go to one's head."

He works Bull open for soft, hushed minutes, with the unswerving concentration he mostly reserves for his spellcraft. The mana he lent the glowstone has faded, and with it the light in the room, but neither of them quite notice. At some point it occurs to Bull that he's stopped tugging on the bindings, except by accident when a tremor of feeling goes through him strong enough.

Dorian reaches up one more time, kisses the taut hollow of Bull's shoulder, and then sinks into him in a long slow thrust. Bull lets out a deep, heaving breath, then another, relishes each small shift and stretch until Dorian halts, a hand spread over Bull's ribs, fingers quivering. "Dorian. Damn, damn, that's--"

"Quite splendid, yes," Dorian says--and next time, Bull will have to pry that flippant wit from him piece by piece--and moves again.

They fuck in a quiet, winding way, Dorian's cock smooth and hot inside him, smothered nothings of want and love slipping from them both. Bull throws his head back and willfully shunts away everything but Dorian: warm, beloved hands upon him, the familiar rasp of Dorian's ragged, needy gasps.

Then Dorian wraps a hand, smoothed by the remains of the oil, around Bull's aching cock, and changes his pace.

It becomes quick curling glides of Dorian's hand, more or less matched by his stuttering thrusts. He spends himself in a shiver of muscles and a choked moan, quite unlike his usual noises. Bull presses a heel into the small of Dorian's back, as if to pin him close, to hold them both in the moment. As soon as Dorian's fingers obey him again, he strokes Bull once more, from root to crown with a grip that should not be so sure in the wash of his orgasm, and that is it.

Dorian has him. He lets himself drop free.

*

Dorian is a boneless, content weight across Bull's chest as he stirs, both of them sticky and drowsy, limbs loose with sleep. One of Dorian's belts still dangles from the headboard, the clasp undone. Dawn shimmers into the room through the sparse-woven linen of the curtains. The lack of Sera's kicks or Josephine's polite knocks on the door tells him that it must be early, not long since sunrise.

Yawning against Bull's shoulder, Dorian casts a bleary glance across the room. "I am not awake. Is it even past the morning bell?"

"Just about." Obligingly Bull swipes Dorian's hair out of his eyes, caught when Dorian fumbles to slot sleep-heavy fingers through his. He should get up, pour washing water, that sort of thing. The bed's probably a mess.

"And here we are, up with the blighted birds." Dorian sighs. He's awfully warm. "I suppose I'll have to resort to the terrible coffee again."

"You could do that." Bull nudges Dorian to move, with some chagrin, then sits up and stretches expansively. Dorian rolls off him, onto his back on the bed. "I've got a better idea."

"Does it involve staying in bed?" A trickle of humour enters Dorian's voice, under his perfunctory morning grouching.

"No." Bull offers him a hand. "Washing up, some walking, and then the best tea you've ever had."

Dorian lets Bull draw him onto his feet. "Lead the way then."

_end_

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Lions in Cages" by Wolf Gang.
> 
> Once again, it's taken a village to get this story ready to be sent into the world. Bri, Marie, Jasper, and all my fellow writing sprinters--I am much obliged. ♥
> 
> Comments are very welcome!


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